Video in the Classroom

As technology continues to advance and to make inroads into so many aspects of our every day life, the classroom in particular has been very keen to find new and more effective ways to deliver on the core mission statement: teaching.

One aspect in particular that has generated both massive interest and dialogue has been the utilization of video. With the amount of information that our society now has at it’s fingertips, how we as a society, and for that matter as a micro-society (a classroom) ingest information has changed dramatically. Not only do we have access to vast troves of information, but our media expectations have evolved as well.

Video

One area in particular that has seen a tremendous shift as a result of recent technology is in how we view and utilize video.

As creators, or ability in this space of video has increased tremendously – many of us now walk around on a daily basis with a video camera in our pocket (the smart phone!)

As viewers our expectations surrounding video have evolved tremendously as well. Watching video used to be a much more involved process. We either had to enter a very large auditorium (the movie theater) or we had to sit in front of a large processing machine in order to see video (the television). Today we still of course continue to have access to movie theaters and television sets, but we know can watch videos from our desktops, our laptops, or phones and of course virtually every new product that Apple releases which is quickly translated into a competing product at virtually every other computing company. There are a lot more windows and many of those windows have an ability to travel (in your pocket, your backpack or even the backseat of your car.)

Not only has our expectation changes in regard to video, but frankly as a result of video now having become so accessible both for the creator and the viewer, video has to a large extent also become expected.

Video in the Classroom

In an environment where quality video is suddenly much more able to be created and where so many of our students are spending so much of their time interacting with video outside of the classroom, the classroom of course can evolve. And this is where it starts to get interesting. This is also where we begin to see an area for debate.

In terms of expectations, in the the classroom, no longer does the playing of a video have to be preceded by the closing of shades and the setup of a cumbersome video projector. In many of today’s classroom, playing video is as simple as heading over to a web browser and clicking play. Further, we are beginning to see portable technologies enter the classroom in ways that even a few years ago felt unimaginable.

Outside of the classroom, we are also seeing a very active movement that is focused on bringing learning into the home that is heavily reliant on the use of video.

The next few years promise to continue to bring in many interesting innovations purely in the space of Video in the Classroom.

Beyond Video – Flipping the Classroom

While video has a very active role to play in how we educate – video alone is not enough. And with the introduction of many new learning technologies we are also beginning to see a very active discussion around the process of Flipping the Classroom where educators are introducing technology into the classroom to help augment the more traditional lecture format, freeing up critical teacher time to address one to one education that is more customized to each student’s needs.

And yes, in this type of teaching environment video has begun to assume an ever increasing role as a wonderful way to integrate into a teacher’s lesson plan and to work with other teaching materials such as printed words, photographs, classroom lab work and the very well established teacher oration.

Here at Why Science, our team is very focused on utilizing technology to help support educators as they try to achieve on Mission Critical – the education of our children. We see the flipped teaching model showing tremendous promise, and we feel the use of the right types of video provides our classrooms with another wonderful resource that continue to providing increasingly value to our classroom for a long time to come. We also continue to be very excited about our own role within the wonderful teaching ecosystem and we look forward to continue to maintain a very active role in this very active intersection of technology and education.